


Brass Monkeys

by kaboomslang



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Fluff, Gift Giving, M/M, i try to write pure fluff but they start arguing and i can't stop them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 15:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9446903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaboomslang/pseuds/kaboomslang
Summary: Chirrut is stubborn, Baze just wants to keep him warm.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is pure un-beta'd nonsense!! i couldn't get the idea out of my head so i wrote it to stall for time before i write my next proper thing

Jedha’s bracing cold is a comfort, a support, a splint on a broken bone. Chirrut tries to remind himself of this in a rhythm, chanting round his ribcage with every numb thud of his ice-heavy boots on the frozen sand,  _ a comfort, a comfort, a comfort. _ Bells clang in the distance, and he blinks himself back into awareness. There’s only darkness fogging across his vision now, none of the weak light of dusk left to filter past his thick cataracts, might as well keep his eyes shut against the stinging air. He sighs, knowing what awaits him at home.

But still, not to fret. Heat is overrated. The few times Chirrut has traveled off-world to a planet with hot deserts (a novelty) or worse, a humid one, he could stand it just until the moment he started sweating whilst standing still, at which point his mood would turn foul.

“People shouldn’t sweat unless they’re training, having excellent sex, or otherwise exerting themselves,” he’d hissed at Baze, who was laughing and bundling him into a cold fresher.

“I’ll sleep in the other hammock tonight then, shall I?” said Baze. “Or maybe you could try wearing fewer than  _ three _ layers of temple sackcloth when we’re visiting a jungle outpost.” Then he had slapped a bar of soap in Chirrut’s left hand, yanked his staff from his right and slammed the fresher door on his protests.

He convulses with the cold when his bare, outstretched hand slips from the street corner; he’s swaying into the wind now, fifty paces to their alleyway. The thing is, it’s about more than the sweat, or the terrible spiny itch in the small of his back.

In the cold, he is an island, volcanic in a polar sea. He knows where his shoreline ends. To know where his limbs are in a confrontation, warm and strong and bright with his veins in the wind, so stark he can almost  _ see _ them, is useful beyond all measure. The heat turns him inside out; suddenly the world is as sweltering as his core and he has no point of reference. He dreads the feel of his body melting into the dense, wet air, his precise movements oozing and soaked away of their sharp edges.

The only thing hotter than the world on any planet, hotter than inside himself, the only sun he knows how to turn his face towards, is Baze.

Baze, he thinks, needs to relocate them at least 25 damned paces closer, so Chirrut can get home quicker.

In a fit of rare pettiness, he takes his boots off inside the door, stamps the ice onto their scabby banthahide rug before kicking them left, where he knows to find them in the morning. It isn’t Baze’s fault his feet are seized in winter’s vice, but he likes to be loud when announcing his presence. He forgets sometimes, that other people can actually see him.

“Where have you been.”

Perhaps it would be better if Baze hadn’t  _ heard _ him either.

“Where have you  _ been _ , Chirrut.” It isn’t a question, because Baze already knows the answer, but Chirrut knows he likes to fuss.

Baze never wears his old robes higher than his midriff around their tiny rooms, claims he runs too hot doing all the cooking and the cleaning and watching Chirrut do his stretches. He sucks his stomach away with a bitten off curse when Chirrut trails an icy hand across his skin in passing. 

“At the Temple, helping the refugees. Oh dumplings, wonderful.” He can smell them, only one for each of them but oily and crisp, crackling deliciously across the back of his throat. Maybe if he tries reaching into the fire for one it will distract Baze from working himself into what sounds like a first-class huff, judging by the ferocity with which he’s returned to stirring the pot.

“You took them more blankets?”

“Yes. Could I have some — ”

“Why didn’t you ask me to come with you? It’s the middle of the night, Chirrut, you know the Imperials change the patrol routes without any warning.”

They both know full well that Chirrut would hear half a dozen stormtroopers cursing the bitter winds before any of them caught a glimpse of him, which means there’s something else troubling Baze. Isn’t there always, these days. “There was no need for the both of us to freeze. You said earlier that you were busy tonight.” 

The straw mat Chirrut is kneeling on has to be half-shredded by now, a nervous tic he’s never trained himself away from. If he’d slipped out into the alleyway, listening for Baze to shout a  _ be safe _ or even a reprimand after him, well, he’d been disappointed. With a grunt he levers his legs out from under him and towards the fire, waiting for the blood-rush to subside.

Every kind of touch between them is welcomed, expected in close and private quarters so he doesn’t startle when Baze’s rough, warm palms envelop one of his stiff hands. Baze is the one who hisses at the chill, and begins rubbing at Chirrut’s knuckles firmly.

“You fool. They’re raw. You’re not putting those anywhere on me tonight.”

Chirrut smiles, but he isn’t fooling himself. Baze is tectonic in his moods, he feels them wholly and to his bones and isn’t one to disregard an argument when he clearly has more to say. Still, he plays along, like having Chirrut back in his sight has ever stopped Baze from worrying about him. 

“You’re the one touching me right now, for all your carping. My hands are fine, I need to feel them against the air, you know this.”

Baze tightens his grip on Chirrut’s hand and snatches the other away from the simmering pot. Chirrut huffs, because if he’s only getting one dumpling he doesn’t want it burnt. “I know you fight better in the cold, Chirrut, but you shouldn’t be out spoiling for a fight in the first place right now. Not so soon after —after the Temple. ”

Chirrut bristles, because that isn’t fair. “I wasn’t  _ spoiling  _ for —I was helping the people who don’t have blankets, or fires, or husbands to come home to! ”

“I’m supposed to protect you.” Baze says. “I was—”

“You were busy, love, I understand. You know I’m more than capable, you’re fussing more than usual, even for you.”

Baze moans in frustration and bows his head to their clasped hands. “Give me strength,” he mutters. “Chirrut, if you’d let me  _ finish _ , I was busy with… gods, just wait here.” 

Their room is only six paces across, from their rickety cot to their thin door that lets the wind in under the threshold, so whatever Baze is hiding can’t be big. Keeping the floor clear is something Baze takes very seriously, ever since they were sixteen and Chirrut broke his collarbone tripping over his own nunchucks. Baze felt responsible, since Chirrut had been furiously trying to undress him at the time.

The room warms up again when Baze settles back down in front of him, blocking the draft. Chirrut has never needed to be able to see when Baze is nervous, he can sense it, the way he can feel all of Baze’s currents flowing around and through him, each others’ tributaries feeding into the river of feeling they share. 

“Don’t laugh,” mutters Baze, and there’s an oddity in itself. The last time Baze had spoken those words to him his wild hair was freshly shorn and Chirrut had touched his ears for the first time.

“Why would I laugh?” Chirrut is bemused, and that doesn’t change when something soft and lumpy is shoved into his hands unceremoniously. “What—?”

“Wear them when we go to the Temple tomorrow. This is the coldest winter in a long time and you’re no good to anyone if you get frostbite and your hands fall off.”

“No good to anyone? Not even you?” Chirrut says faintly, because if he’s not mistaken, if he isn’t lying passed out from hypothermia in the alley outside, then there’s a good chance his ridiculous, darling Baze has just handed him a pair of woollen mittens.

“Especially not to me. Who’ll braid my hair, and sew our robes back together, or—”

“Baze.”

“Who will bring me off?” Baze continues hurriedly, clearly stalling, and Chirrut bubbles over laughing before he can get a word in. He reaches out to stroke back the hair at Baze’s temple, rubs his thumb over the shell of his burning ear, blushing hard as he always does when he says anything remotely lewd.

“Baze, where did you get these?”

A harsh sigh expels over his wrist and Chirrut grins. “I made them.”

“You made them.” He traces the loose knit, wool still retaining that fresh, slick feel as if it was spun straight from the Jedhan rockgoat that day. At least it was tailor made to withstand everything their moon’s bitter mesas could throw at them.

Baze’s hands are balled into fists in Chirrut’s lap, and Chirrut pets down his thick forearm slowly, reassuring. Baze has done this for a reason.

“I—my grandmother, she taught me to knit. I’m not good, so I never told you.”

“I know everything about you, good and not good, and this is what you keep from me? You’re a sap.” Chirrut slips on the mittens and they’re  _ warm,  _ too warm for indoors, but soft. He cups Baze’s face and enjoys the feel of them scraping over facial hair for a moment. Baze sighs again and leans in to kiss him, their mouths opening to one another on instinct and they sway there together, tongues ebbing and flowing between them as they press closer, and closer. The fire has warmed Baze’s bare skin to a burning plain of slick muscle, and Chirrut breaks the kiss to wind his arms around his neck, burrowing his face to Baze’s throat where it’s hottest. This, this is what he dreads in a fight, losing track of where he ends and the world begins, but like this, with Baze it’s what he loves the most. Melting into Baze’s body, getting lost in the blaze of his mouth, pushing inside each other with fingers and cocks until they’re gasping, two people branded together even after they’ve come apart.

Baze speaks into the melted frost in his hair, “You don’t have to wear them when you’re out on your own. Or at all, Force knows I can’t make you do anything. I just want you to let me protect you, even when I’m not there. Even if it’s just from the cold.”

“I will,” he says, and he means it. “As long as you want to.” They’re not really talking about the gloves any more.

“I’ll always want to,” whispers Baze, then he’s making an indignant noise when Chirrut pushes up and out of his lap. “Where are you going?”

“Can’t let these ruined dumplings burn the house down while you’re fucking me,” Chirrut sing-songs, feeling for the blackening pot’s handle and moving it to the hearth before dragging Baze to his feet. “Now then, since my hands aren’t going to fall off with frostbite any time soon, let’s see what I can do with them, hmm?”

Baze’s silence is one Chirrut knows well, this one tastes particularly scandalised, and he snickers into the thick wool of his palm. Baze’s hands find his waist and they’re falling slowly down into the low bed before he replies, “Chirrut, I love you, but you’re not getting my come on your gift.”


End file.
